11 Quick Solutions to a Failed Business Facebook Page

Posted on June 29th, 2015 by Quertime Writer in Social Media

Facebook is the perfect medium for brands to interact with fans. It is the ideal advertisement platform because it provides marketing facilities like paid ads. The number of Facebook users has risen from 1 billion in 2012 to a whopping 1.44 billion in 2015! This means that 1.44 billion people regularly access their Facebook pages. They regularly look for updates of the people they know, the neighborhoods they live in and the things they like and use!

Today there is an approximate of 30 million businesses that promote their sales and interact with fans. Yet, it would be interesting to note that they hardly get any traffic at times. According to a study conducted in Singapore, 95% of small businesses fail on Facebook. So, it raises the question, “Why do businesses fail on Facebook, but they succeed on other platforms?

Reasons Why Businesses Fail, and Solutions on How to Fix Them

Failure #1: Lack of Personal Interaction
Companies with Facebook pages fail to give a personal touch to it. They fail to identify their target audience and to interact with them. They use their pages more like a personal memoir and less like what it is meant to be, “A social media platform for interacting with their customers!”

Solution: Be Interactive
First of all, identify your target audience. Research shows that products which are marketed towards a specific group of individuals get more views and take an interest in your business! Reply to your fans’ posts and answer their queries! Show your fans that you are there to take ownership if one of your products has something go wrong with it. If there are delays in shipment, be there to check up on the courier or clear your position to the people who are trusting you with their hard earned money! Don’t be like the business in the image shared above!

Failure #2: Improper Page URL
Some pages do not have user-friendly URL’s; Facebook does not have the most user-friendly search features. So if the page has a complicated or less known name, it would not be visible in the search bar or easy to remember. It is a good Facebook page strategy to keep URL simple and not to put too many punctuation marks or complicated characters. For example, ‘www.Facebook.com/abc-women-and-children-garments-pvt-ltd’ is not a good name!

Solution: Make It Easy to Remember
Keep a simple URL which would show up in a random search and would be easy to remember. For example, ‘www.facebook.com/scholarships’ is easy to find and remember. Thus, it will be viewed more often and more members can participate in the discussions.

Failure #3: Censorship
When Nestle once heard that their fans were using modified versions of their logo, they strongly censored it on their page! This was a mistake. It created an atmosphere of ‘them vs us’ which discourages participation.

Solution: Be Flexible
Be flexible with your customers. Telling them that it’s “our product, our page” doesn’t make them feel welcome. It creates an environment of hostility and competition; taking all the sales with the fans.

Failure #4: Taking Compliments Only
A small airline company in Singapore once got a long customer complaint on their page about the quality of their service, the non-serious attitude of their personnel and the overall horrible experience while traveling. The airline responded by marking the post as irrelevant and ignored it!

Solution: Acknowledge and Reply
Instead of just removing the comment or making it irrelevant, the best policy would be to acknowledge the comment, reply to it and be polite. Remember that censorship is not an option!

Failure #5: Dormant Facebook Page
Some companies just create business pages and then forget all about them! They have no activity in years upon years. A page may have been created in 2011 and then allowed to stay that way through 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015! That is not a good facebook page strategy.

Solution: Be Active
Keep updating your page with the latest material; don’t just create a page for using up space on Facebook, promote Facebook page and make the company come alive!

Failure #6: Lack of Advertising
Companies which advertise heavily in the traditional media often completely neglect advertising on Facebook. In fact, some companies don’t have an official Facebook page at all.

Solution: Advertise
Facebook is the most preferred social media platform having over a billion users, so marketing on Facebook is far reaching, low cost and makes a significant difference in the earnings of a company. If affordable, businesses should make use of the paid advertisement feature and promote Facebook page to a wider user base!

Failure #7: Competing with Better Businesses
Sometimes if your business is small, you have a competition leading to a better service, better value for money or a larger budget. This makes you lose fans as all the traffic is directed towards those pages.

Solution: Target Your Audience
Use this simple Facebook page strategy to fix it. Target smaller audience in order to get you out of the tight niche of competing with companies that have a broader budget and greater resources.

Failure #8: Irrelevant Marketing Content
Some companies use their Facebook pages as bulletin boards. They post everything from their staff birthdays to promotions on the same space. This makes the page extremely cluttered and it is difficult to find something of value or learning about it.

Solution: Share Knowledge Enhancing Posts
People are attracted to posts which bring some knowledge value to the table. According to a survey, posts which bring knowledge and learning to fans are more popular. Therefore, it is a wise move to promote Facebook page by sharing some tutorials or fun facts about your products.

Failure #9: Refusing to Change
People change and do their preferences. Some pages hold out against change and become unappealing to their fans. When Facebook newly introduced the timeline, it was not very well received. Some pages refused to adopt it.

Solution: Stay Updated
Keep updated with changing trends and competition. If one thing does not work, try and change Facebook page strategy because another thing might just do so!

Failure #10: All Work, No Play
Businesses which want to give the impression that they are highly professional and efficient often keep their Facebook updates about official announcements. There is never a light post, no jokes and nothing to give the page a human touch.

Solution: Share Light Posts as Well
It’s good to be professional in your dealings, but Facebook is an interactive platform. It helps when your page shows the lighter side of life by sharing an anecdote or two.

Failure #11: Bad Business Partners
This is a co-dependent world. No one can succeed alone. However, partnering up with the wrong people can do irreparable damage to your business as well.

Solution: Be Vigilant
Choose your partners carefully and your resources just as carefully. If you feel that someone out there is a weak link, warn them and take action. After all, it’s your business and you are responsible for it!

The most important tip of all, however, is to keep your morale high! In business, it is normal to sustain profit and loss equally. Some days are hard, others are easy. Don’t ever give up!

Author: Andy Thompson

Andy Thompson has been a freelance writer for a long while.Her passion in writing is her main drive in crafting articles that are engaging, informative, and meaningful. Her partnership with TroopSocial has given her a whole new opportunity to take writing to a whole new level.